Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Local workarounds with no reported bugs

[Michał Górny]

On Tue, 18 Oct 2016 21:09:44 +0200
Patrick Lauer  wrote:

> On 10/17/16 09:23, Michał Górny wrote:
> > Hello, everyone.
> > 
> > I'd like to point out a major problem in Gentoo: there's a fair number
> > of developers who add various local workarounds to problems they meet
> > and don't bother to report a bug. Worst than that, this applies not
> > only for upstream problems but also to Gentoo eclass/ebuild-related
> > issues.
> > 
> > 
> > Example: udev people had problems with MULTILIB_WRAPPED_HEADERS
> > in the past. Instead of contacting me  
> ... bus factor of 1, that's not a good strategy in general.

s/me/anyone on multilib team/. Does that make you happy? But yes, I
should add a big fat warning to the docs.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny



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[gentoo-dev] Re: Local workarounds with no reported bugs

[Patrick Lauer]

On 10/17/16 09:23, Michał Górny wrote:
> Hello, everyone.
> 
> I'd like to point out a major problem in Gentoo: there's a fair number
> of developers who add various local workarounds to problems they meet
> and don't bother to report a bug. Worst than that, this applies not
> only for upstream problems but also to Gentoo eclass/ebuild-related
> issues.
> 
> 
> Example: udev people had problems with MULTILIB_WRAPPED_HEADERS
> in the past. Instead of contacting me
... bus factor of 1, that's not a good strategy in general.

> (which would result in helpful
> explanation how to do things properly), they abused bash to disable
> the check function implicitly in the ebuilds.


> Nobody bothered to inform me of the issue there.
Well, you didn't ask ;)

 Instead, I had to
> notice it looking at the udev ebuilds accidentally. Furthermore, in
> most of the ebuilds the workaround was no longer necessary but nobody
> bothered to check that.
> 
> 
> Example 2: Coacher had problem with git-r3 not trying fallback URIs
> when earlier URI was https and https wasn't supported in git. So he
> reordered URIs to have https last. With tiny explanation in some random
> commit message.
> 
> So we have a problem that affects around a half of git-r3 packages
> (using quick grep, results inaccurate), however minor it is. Worse, it
> affects the policy of preferring https and causes some people to reject
> the policy silently. And nobody gives a damn to report it!
> 
> 
> Therefore, I'd like to request establishing an official policy against
> workarounds with no associated bug reports.
That's too fuzzy to make a policy. Feels good, everyone agrees with the
idea, but where's the limit? When is it a required fix, when it is just
a workaround? What needs to be upstreamed, and what can't be upstreamed?

> 
> Your thoughts?
> 
I like the general idea of ... like ... improving ... things, but you
should be more precise and try to avoid creating situations with a bus
factor of one.